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Richmond Hill High School is unbeaten and running roughshod over opponents, but the Wildcats may be finding respect outside the Coastal Empire doesn’t come easy.

One only has to look at this week’s Maxwell projections from Georgia High School Football Daily – the Wildcats are 9-point underdogs -- to understand how far Richmond Hill has yet to go to get statewide respect.

In other words, it’s not how you’ve won. It’s who you played.

In Richmond Hill’s case, the Wildcats have been dominating by any measure you care to throw out, but I’ll go with the one that really counts: They’ve outscored opponents 123-6 in three games.

Unfortunately, those same opponents have a combined 1-11 record and for the most part have been getting stomped new body parts no matter who they've played.

They’re also known in some prep football circles as “Savannah schools,” a stereotype which means public school football programs with talent but little support and even fewer resources with which to develop it.

But that doesn’t tell the entire story either. Because the Wildcats haven’t just won, they’ve played a lot of folks while doing it.

“The great thing about is we’re getting the chance to play a lot of kids,” RHHS coach Lyman Guy said. “When we have the opportunity to put kids in the game we play them and give those second and third string guys time to develop on both sides of the ball. We’re not trying to preserve shutouts or blow anybody out.”Still, the viewpoint won’t change until the Wildcats change it. They’ll have a chance Friday night against Glynn Academy, a solid program and iin recent years one of the best along the coast not named Camden County.

“I think there are some teams in our region that are probably a little better than what we’ve seen so far, and Glynn is one of them,” Guy said. “It will be a great measuring stick to see where we are as a program.”

But Guy doesn’t throw Savannah schools under the bus. You get the sense he thinks they get a raw deal.

“I think Jenkins and Windsor Forest and Groves are about as good as any other schools in our area,” he said. “You look at Johnson, they gave Appling County fits.”In other words, keep an open mind.

“I think there’s a little misconception there, and it’s like anything else. The Lowndes and Warner Robins are not quite as legendary as everybody likes to think they are, and the teams we think of as bad aren’t as bad as we think they are, either.”

One thing worth noting:Richmond Hill has come a long way in a lot of areas, not least of which is on the field.

Still, it might be useful to remember that history also shows that the Wildcats used to play in one of the toughest football conferences in the state when they were in 2-AAA.Those were salad days for programs in Swainsboro, Screven County, Appling County and so on. Those schools could beat anyone in the state, regardless of classification, and often did. So classification doesn't always mean what folks tend to think it means.